“Hey, hey! Dude!” Mikey reached over and grabbed Roy’s shoulder. “Dude, dude.” Mikey was laughing now. “You should see your face. I didn’t mean it like you would rob anybody. Not for weed. Don’t be crazy.”

Roy looked at Mikey, bewildered. His neck was cold with sweat. His hands were icy and damp.

“Damn, man. You need to chill,” Byron said.

“No, hang on. I’ve got an idea.” Mikey left the room and came back with a terry-cloth-wrapped something that he thunked down onto the table.

Somehow it was obvious that only one thing in the world would make a noise like that. Mikey unwrapped the gun, a black .38 revolver, bullet tips glowering from their nests in the barrel. Roy might have been less alarmed if the guy had uncovered a coiled snake.

“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Mikey said. “You live in your truck, right?”

Roy had been in Mikey’s house for just over fourteen hours, with Byron, and briefly some girl, and a game and some jokes and more untroubled sleep than he’d had in months.

He’d woken not even noticing his hope, well rested beneath his jacket, but on top of a pillow that smelled like flowery perfume. He’d forgotten about the truck and the several hundred pounds of useless junk in the back. None of his heaps of nothing had crossed his mind in more than half a day, and he’d forgotten that he was worried about feeling low. Some pound-puppy part of his mind had curled up as if he were home, as if he’d been adopted.

Byron chimed in, “Ray, man, it’s okay. No shame that you have to stay in your truck sometimes. You’re getting by, man. We all get by as best we can.”

“Roy,” said Roy.

“What?”

“My name is Roy, not Ray.”

“Oh. Right. Sorry, man.”

“So I was thinking,” Mikey continued. “Anybody who lives in his truck should have a gun. You don’t know what could happen. You might need it. There are assholes out there who need to see a gun to believe you. And I’ll sell you this one for a hundred.”

“You’re going to sell your brother’s gun?” Byron asked.

“He’s got, like, six of ’em.” Mikey nodded to his own decision. “Plus, fuck that guy. He’s probably the one who broke my TV. And, yeah, fuck that guy.”

Roy jammed his fingernail down over a bottom tooth. “I don’t want a gun,” he said around his chewing.

“You probably do, seriously, but whatever,” Byron said. “If not, just buy it and sell it, if you want.” The hope for getting high had returned to his voice. “It’s worth way more than a hundred dollars. Bet Mikey here would take a little less, right, Mike?”